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SCIENTIFIC AMUSEMENTS ; 



FOR THE OLD AND THE YOUNG, 



THE GRAVE AND THE GAY. 



DESIGNED FOR CENTRE TABLE AND FIRE SIDE RECREATION 



BY C. C. C. 



COPY RIGHT SECURED. 






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pftflatreipUta. 

STEREOTYPED BY S. DOUGLAS WYETH. 

1844. 



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Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1 844, by 

C. C. CHAPMAN, 

in the office of the clerk of the district court of the United 

States in the eastern district of Pennsylvania. 



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A FEW WORDS TO THE PURCHASER. 

The amusement now offered to the public is said 
to have originated with the Chinese. It was one 
of the favorite amusements of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
who is known to have been deeply skilled in 
mathematics, while an exile on St. Helena. The 
figures, or problems in this amusement are all 
mathematical in their structure, and the mind is 
mathematically engaged in their solution. 

The advantages of an amusement that will bias 
the mind toward any of the useful sciences will 
readily be perceived upon a moment's reflection. 
It is unnecessary at this time to write a treatise on 
the advantages of useful amusements; this has 
already been done by many able writers, and the 
fact is too well known to need further argument. 

The purchaser of this amusement will find a 
small box, containing seven mathematical plates. 
Five of these plates are right-angled triangles of 
different sizes, also one perfect square, and one 

rhomboid. 

(iii) 



(iv) 

These seven plates, when rightly placed together, 
will form an exact square, and also all the various 
shaped figures, or problems contained in the book. 
In addition to the box of plates, there are two small 
books, each containing more than three hundred 
and twenty different shaped problems or figures. 
In one book the figures are in solid form, in the 
other, which is called the key, the same figures are 
so divided, as to show the position that each plate 
will occupy in solving the problem. A very few 
words will enable the purchaser to commence and 
pursue this useful and amusing exercise through all 
the various problems. 

Take the book of solid figures, and select any one 
of them agreably to fancy ; then go to work with 
the seven plates, and try your skill in so placing 
them together that they will make a figure of the 
same shape and form as the one you have selected. 
If you fail to accomplish this after trying a 
reasonable time, you can turn to the corresponding 
page of the other book, and find the same figure so 
divided that the position is shown which each plate 
occupies in the structure of the figure. But no 
person should have recourse to the key, or divided 



(v) 

figures, until they have faithfully tried to solve the 
problem without the aid of that book. 

Both sexes, from childhood to age, can engage in 
this amusement with pleasure and profit. Young 
ladies will find it a very agreable appendage to their 
centre tables — young gentlemen will find it a 
pleasant and instructive companion in their lodging 
rooms, and parents will cultivate a taste for mathe- 
matics and architectural science in their sons, by 
furnishing them with this useful recreation for the 
mind. 



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